Gravity on Uranus

byFraser CainonOctober 1, 2008

Uranus. Image credit: Hubble

If you could stand on the surface of Uranus (you can’t, for so many reasons), you would experience 89% the force of gravity that you experience on Earth. Another way to look at it is that objects dropped towards Uranus will accelerate towards the planet at 8.69 m/s2.

Does it seem a little strange to you that an planet like Uranus, with the 14 times the mass of Earth, would pull at you with less gravity if you could stand on its surface? The mass is important, but it all depends on how closely that mass is held together. Uranus is the second least dense planet in the Solar System (after Saturn). It has enough volume to hold 63 Earths, but it only has 14 times our mass.

So if you could stand on the surface of the planet – you can’t, don’t try – you would have a difficult time noticing the lower gravity of Uranus. It would feel very similar to Earth gravity.